The present invention relates generally to a feeding apparatus, and more particularly to a poultry feeding apparatus for use in conjunction with a feed conveyor.
In many poultry operations, it is the general practice to keep the birds in cages. The cages are normally arranged in long rows throughout the poultry house. In such installations, it is, of course, necessary to deliver food to the birds in the cages. One of the most successful and efficient systems for achieving this desired result has been by the use of tubes having elongated cable members which pass longitudinally through the tubes and pull the feed along with it. Such a system is shown generally in U.S. Pat. No. 2,918,037.
One of the first ways in which poultry was fed from the above mentioned conveyor systems is shown in FIG. 7 of U.S. Pat. No. 2,738,766, which shows a cable conveyor system which merely has the top thereof removed so that the poultry can have direct access to the feed within the tube and around the conveying member. It has been found, however, that if such a feeder system is used and the poultry are allowed to have direct access thereto at a time when the conveyor is in operation, that the beaks of the poultry can be easily damaged by the movement of the conveyor, and that the beaks of poultry can easily be pulled off of the bird if the bird is feeding at the end of a trough and the beak becomes caught between the conveyor member and the discharge tube, as shown in FIG. 8 of U.S. Pat. No. 2,738,766. Because of this problem, guards have been devised for poultry feeding troughs which prevent the birds from getting their beaks into the conveyor structure. Such a guard is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,827,877.
Another problem recognized generally in the prior art is the one of delivering a uniform quantity of feed for each bird within the poultry installation. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,776,191 discloses a poultry feeding apparatus which has a feature for adjusting the level of the conveyor tube with respect to the feeding trough in order to prevent the birds at the beginning of the conveyor system from receiving more feed than the birds at the end of the conveyor system.
It can therefore be seen that there is a need for a feeding apparatus which is very simple and which has a minimum of moving parts or adjustments that are necessarily associated therewith. It is desirable for example, to make a feeding trough and conveyor tube of one piece construction. There is also a need to hold the production and material costs down as much as possible for the production of a feeding trough and to provide a structure which maintains a low level of feed in a feeding trough so that the feed is not wasted.